Questioning Cole

The Pittsburgh Pirates made Gerrit Cole and his golden arm the #1 overall selection for the 2011 MLB draft. There is no questioning the power behind that arm. All young pitchers come with inherit injury risk, but there has been no indication or history that would suggest Cole is any more susceptible to breaking down than any other young pitcher.

He touts a fastball in the mid-90s, a slider in the high 80s, a curveball with good break, and a strongly developing changeup. His frame and delivery are solid enough for a prospect.

The real question I have about Gerrit Cole is: what is between his ears and inside his heart?

Despite his overwhelming stuff, his numbers have never been off the charts or anywhere close to dominate during his time at UCLA. Most scouts, experts, coaches, and media have been dismissive of such numbers, but I feel there is a legitimate reason for concern there. These folks far too often get infatuated with an arm and forget that a lot more goes into pitching than talent alone.

I know that Wins and Losses are no indication of the quality a pitcher’s performance on a given day. But, taken as a whole, they can be viewed as a measure of competitiveness and leadership. Maybe this is just an old-school anti-sabremetrics opinion, but I still view baseball as a competition between two sides trying to outscore one another. I don’t view the batters, pitchers, and fielders as individual entities on isolated islands of action, but as parts of a whole performance that comes together and is either successful (win) or not (loss). If you don’t believe me, look at the atmosphere and the tone of interviews that take place in a locker-room after a game. It is drastically different depending on the results of the contest that just took place. Team achievement is still part of baseball, no matter what the statistics and other measurables say.

Cole has not strapped his UCLA teammates onto his broad shoulders and said: ‘All aboard!’ In fact his teammate, Trevor Bauer has been the real Ace of the Bruins staff, with 203 strikeouts to Coles 119, and only yielding 19 earned runs to Cole’s 42. In fact, Cole has the highest ERA on the team at 3.31 for guys who hurled at least 30 innings of work.

Now, College numbers are not the be-all, end-all of a prospect, I will admit that. But there are other red flags that have been raised about Cole’s mental makeup as well. After his freshman year of college, in which he also had a losing record, Cole was ticked off and considered quitting baseball. That is an Ian Snell level red flag if I have ever seen on. "Being able to taste failure, it makes you kind of want to throw up," Cole told Baseball America last month. "It makes you just hate the game."

He supposedly got over this understandable 18 year old hissy fit, but after losses this season, the wiser, more mature Cole has been reported to have thrown his ballcap into trashcans and kicked over equipment carts. "I don't have any answers," Cole told reporters. "The overall goal this year was to pound the zone. I've been getting ahead of guys. It's just that the ball's getting hit around the park."

Cole most certainly has the stuff to be a legitimate big league power arm. As no better teacher than Master Yoda would say however: “control, control, he must learn control.”

That goes for both the mechanics of his pitching and the way he handles himself in preparation for games and responds to disappointment as well.